Improve Your Travel Writing by Engaging Your Readers

The internet has been both a blessing and a curse for travel writers. Many longtime travel writers curse the internet for its role in the elimination of a large number of formerly lucrative print publication opportunities, and praise it for the proliferation of online publishing opportunities.In addition to opening up new opportunities to get published, the internet has given Travel Writers a great gift – the ability to connect with his or her audience.Before travel blogging and online travel magazines became popular, travel writers would submit their articles to a print magazine, or maybe the travel section of a newspaper. While the author could – if one were interested enough – find out subscription and circulation numbers, he or she didn’t really know if anyone actually read the article, or if it received even so much as glanced as the reader flipped though the pages.You couldn’t peer over the reader’s shoulder to see if they just scanned it or read every word, couldn’t eavesdrop on conversations about your article. And truth be told, plenty of Travel Writers really didn’t care much — they loved to travel and they were being paid to write about it, so who cared if anyone had actually read what they’d written?I believe that really good writers – people for whom writing is a passion – care very much if anyone reads their words, if the reader enjoyed the article, if someone was inspired or motivated by it. And more than just caring, most writers crave feedback.At the core of this feedback are two key components to becoming a successful Travel Writer and Blogger:

The ability to know if our words are actually being read (through statistical reporting); and
the ability to stimulate and engage in conversation with our readers (through comments).
The first component is easy to accomplish – and free. Google Analytics can be installed on your travel blog in minutes, and gives you loads of information on your visitor’s behavior on your site – like what articles they read and how long they spent on those articles (a couple of seconds? They left without reading it. A minute or so? They scanned it. More than a few minutes? They read it!).When you find that certain articles (topics) are getting many more “reads” than other topics – that’s a clear message. Your audience is telling you “give us more of that!” If you aren’t already using Google Analytics, you should be, and you should be paying close attention to what it tells you. Knowing how to “hear” what your audience is telling you is an important factor in increasing the size of your audience.And a travel blogger with a large and loyal audience will find more publication opportunities coming their way than one with few, if any, readers.The second component is also important – and oddly I still occasionally discover travel blogs that don’t allow comments from readers. Once in a while if I have a minute to spare and enough curiosity I’ll drop the site owner an email to ask why they have comments turned off. Generally the responses run along the lines of “I don’t want to moderate comments” or “I don’t want people leaving comments just to get links to themselves” and even “I just don’t have time to respond to them”.Analytical tools are great for telling you what folks are reading, but they can’t tell you if someone liked what you wrote. If they were motivated to venture off to distant lands because of what you wrote. You need feedback for that. You need comments. Give people the opportunity to tell you that they really liked your article – or that you made them stop and think. Give them the opportunity to make suggestions for your next visit, or offer some advice in return. Don’t require registration to comment, as that creates an obstacle that readers may not want to surmount. Make it easy for readers to converse with you.Sure you might get some comment spam. Deal with it. There are several great plugins available that eliminate most of the spam. Delete any that gets through. Not engaging your readers in conversation through your comments means that you’ll miss out on valuable insights and opportunities.I’m reminded of an old Chinese proverb, one I try to practice:
“To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation”Without that conversation you’ll have to pat your own back!Take advantage of these two tools and they’ll help you understand your readers, improve the content of your travel blog, and increase the size of your audience, all of which will make you a better travel writer.

Travel Clinics To Seek Health Protection When Traveling Abroad

In order to have a safe and healthy overseas travel, a lot of prior preparation is needed. If you are traveling to countries where pandemics are rampant, you should seek services of a good travel clinic to provide you with necessary vaccinations. It can make your travel hassle free.A travel clinic provides vital information about the diseases that you may acquire while traveling abroad. It aims to equip you with the knowledge that you require to protect yourself from variety of disease and the measures to be undertaken if you fall in during the course of your travel.With the increasing incidences of inflictions of pandemic in various parts of world, every trip out of country exposes you to risks of acquiring various diseases. These risks may vary depending upon the age of person, health status, mode of travel, destination, duration of stay, purpose of travel, and type of accommodation. Proper observation for certain precautions and taking right medications and vaccines can prevent falling prey of various sicknesses.The basic threats that might affect your health while traveling are; motion sickness, jet lag, heatstroke, traveler’s diarrhea, altitude-related illness, malaria, and yellow fever. While malaria inflictions can be attained during travel to Africa, South America, and Far East, yellow fever inflictions are common in areas of Africa and South America.The ideal time to visit clinic is four to six weeks prior to your trip as the vaccines and medicines that are meant to be administered need to be taken well in advance. In few cases, when a trip is planned on a short notice, you should not ignore the importance and efficacy of visiting your nearest clinic to get the necessary vaccines and medications.A travel clinic may provide you with general tips on environmental safety, motion sickness, jet lag, and problems with air travel. Specific tips may be required for pregnant woman, newborns, infants, children, elderly, handicapped, and the people who suffer from chronic illnesses or cardiac diseases.The health professionals at these clinics may advise you on how to put together the travel health kit and the appropriate medicines that might be useful in case of any emergency treatment. The professionals at these clinics stay updated and provide you vital information on the diseases that you might encounter at your travel to different destinations.You can even seek the services of a travel clinic after your travel in case of any post-travel illnesses. If you wish to travel abroad, it is important to visit your travel clinic to seek vital information to ensure safe traveling for your and your family.

Travel Guide

Who likes taking vacations? Of course, that would include approximately 99 percent of the population. The 1 percent would more than likely be workaholics that just do not like taking work along with them on vacation. And, no matter who you are, you probably like getting that travel deal.Travel deals can come from the actual airplane flight, a hotel discount, car rental savings, cruise packages, and you can obtain travel deals from travel guides.What are the most popular travel deals? The most popular travel deals include1) last minute labor day deals or otherwise last minute getaway for the holiday weekend savings. You can save up to 70 percent on these last minute getaways for the holiday weekends. Usually, these featured deals include both air fare and hotel packaged-savings. A lot of times the travel package deals come with flexible departure dates from Thursday to Saturday. Of course, the travel packaged-deals expire within a limited time offer period, usually a weekend only packaged-deal.2) Compare and save on air fare. Now you can see if you are getting a good travel deal. A lot of sites offer this option of compare and save on air fare and other flight services. Example, you can compare and save for Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year air fare flight rates. Often, you can get last minute travel deals with last minute packages from $199, United States dollars.Other popular travel deals. Looking for a travel deal to London, Paris, Venice, Barcelona to New York, Arizona, or other popular hot vacation spots? Frequently, Norwegian Cruise Line, Westin Kierland Resort and Spa, and Continental Airlines offer hot deals on travel packages. You will find offers for travel credits, one way, round trip, pre-purchase, and other fantastic travel deals. Some popular travel deal destinations can include Atlantic City, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Orlando, San Francisco. Some popular international travel deals include travel locations such as Aruba, Bahamas, Cabo San Lucas, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Paris, and Puerto Vallarta.Popular travel deal sites. You can search and find travel deals with carrentals.com, Orbiz, Delta Air Lines, Travelocity, Expedia, travel.yahoo.com, travelchannel.com, travel.nytimes.com, cnn.com, and County Visitors Bureaus. For US citizen traveling abroad, try travel.state.gov. For car rentals, you can search and find deals from $10 and up for a weekend car rental deal. For hotels on sale nationwide, you can search and find deals from 30% off. For last minute fares, you can search and find weekend air fare deals. For county visiting bureaus, you can search and find hotel discounts and gift card options. Travel guides, travel magazines, travel zoo, train travel, last minute travel, cruises, and airlines offer many appealing travel deals.Take advantage of all the travel deal options. To do this, you may want to explore package deals, not just a particular travel deal for flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, and vacations. There are many available travel deals for many popular travel destinations in the United States and Internationally. Search all travel destinations if you are not set on one particular vacation hot spot. You will find different travel deals for various hot spots, vacation location destinations, throughout the travel holidays and seasonal travel deals as well.